


stars begin to fade, yet you do not

by crispytins



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Lonely Merlin, M/M, Post-Camlann, Post-Canon, look he's all alone for 1500 years now, they messed up a perfectly good merlin, yes this is honest to god angst i can hardly believe it myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-20 14:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19993804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crispytins/pseuds/crispytins
Summary: There are some things that time cannot mend. Some things you can't escape, no matter how much you yearn to try.Merlin tries to forget. He tries and tries and tries.





	stars begin to fade, yet you do not

**Author's Note:**

> what can i say except (low whisper) i'm sorry

The sun rose upon a cloudless sky. 

The world kept on turning, the men kept on breathing, and all was as it should be. 

In a field, just on the edge of Camelot’s western border, was an expanse of golden wheat that swayed with the breeze, dancing as the summer season commenced. From here, one could see the flapping red flags of the palace bearing a hint of the golden crest, the tall towers, the gray stone walls. Distance made it harder to clearly see the gates, but you could see people bustling about past them, as small as ants and rushing to business, as things ought to be in a kingdom. 

It was the perfect vantage point to view Camelot. Depending on where you stood, it was placed in a position that could greet you or bid you farewell. 

A man sat amongst the grain, a beaten up messenger bag slung across his shoulder, watching the castle in silence. 

Many years had passed, and the wrinkles on his forehead revealed years past of laughter, of pain and anger and joy, and all other feelings that one can feel in between. The turn of his lips were set downwards, creasing his skin, and his eyes were deep, swallowing pools of sorrow and bitter and blue. One could guess that he had seen war, but none were too sure. No, none were too sure besides a few. 

The scarlet scarf wound around his neck was long since frayed, and a small jay burrowed itself in the folds. 

It tweeted shrilly. The man smiled faintly and took it into his scarred, calloused hands, fingers caressing its body, admiring briefly light sapphire feathers flecked with glints of white and gold in the wingtips. Happily, the bird leaned into his touch. 

“Perhaps,” he mused thoughtfully, “it’s time that I ought to be leaving.” The sparrow nor wheat did not answer; the wood behind stayed silent, the sun continued to beam, and there was no response. Of course there wouldn't be. But he already knew that he really should be going, answer or not.

The world continued to go upon its businesses, but it wasn’t that Merlin ever noticed. 

He didn’t notice much anymore. 

With a sigh, he rose from the field, sweeping wheat brushing against his breeches. He opened his palms, watching as the small bird flitted back into the thicket, the wings folding up.

A fleeting thought cut across his mind, something about how the blue of the jay’s wings matched the eyes of… 

Merlin stilled. Slowly, he turned around to face the castle, the familiar spires that he had once called home. There it was again, that aching thump in his heart, as he recalled memories of someone’s bright, crooked smile calling his name from courtyards and corridors and chambers. 

Someone with hair flaxen like the summer wheat.

He swallowed.

Camelot...it was only a short distance away. Not an hour’s time, Merlin thought. He could still return, if he should hesitate a second further. The queen would insist he stay, and the knights would rejoice...the villagers would smile blithely but be happy all the same…

But his clothes would still smell like _him_ , and the walls would be shrouded in thick, black sheets to mourn, and all anyone could do was to remember and to cry that the king was...

_Stop._

“Yes,” Merlin muttered. “I have lingered here for too long.” 

The breeze whispered as he stood his ground, pulling a map from his pocket and reviewing his course. He tapped a thin, red line that extended far beyond any established borders, and hummed as he set off on his course, down a beaten road hidden behind barley fields and farmer’s huts and fishing ponds. 

The castle beckoned him again, in a soft, teasing voice he knew dearly. 

He ignored it, boots crunching against stiff soil and grass of the road. 

It would lead to the heart of Essetir, he knew. And then to the edges of Lot's kingdom, the cutting coastline of Gedref, before plunging into lands unclaimed by kings of old that lay barren and as cold as the winter’s wake. 

Far, far away he would be, farther than any man ought to be. 

But this was for the best, he told himself. It is as it should be. 

The noon turned to dusk, and the dusk melted into a cool night, but Merlin didn’t cease. 

On and on he went, as the earth turned and changed. The summer turned to autumn, and the autumn turned to winter. Days turned to months, to years, to decades. His hair turned from brown to gray to white, and the fabric of the world shifted. 

His past called him. He did not look back.

Storms rumbled, death stole away breath, and castles and kingdoms fell, but still Merlin walked.

On and on, until he could walk no longer.

On and on, as memories of a life long since past refused to fade, of a man who had once told him to never, never change.

Of a king who had slung an arm around him and told him that no man was worth his tears. An idiot who was braver than a lion and as stubborn as a mule, who had made him feel whole, good, alive. 

A gorgeous phantom of a memory, of a man called Arthur. 

_"Sometimes you do puzzle me, Merlin," Arthur had said once, cupping the side of Merlin's cheek. "You never cease to amaze me." His eyes had been impossibly soft, flickering in the firelight of his chambers as they rested upon his rugs._

_Merlin had smiled then, his heart swelling in his chest, before responding, "If I were predictable, you would get bored."_

_Arthur hummed, arching a brow. "I don't know. I think it would be hard to get bored of you."_

"Please," Merlin whispered hoarsely one night, staring long and hard into the stars. Avalon lapped at his feet, mockingly so, as the heavens above blinked dimly. 

Stars had become increasingly more difficult to see with the pollution and smog, and he stirred at recollections of someone strong holding him close some thousand years ago as they laughed into the universe, into a twilight world where they had been each other's beacons.

Gentle hands folding over his own, and a cape bearing a golden dragon wrapping around them both as they embraced. Kisses and lazy smiles in the dark. Those were what Merlin could remember. 

But even the most vivid of memories began to fade away, like a lullaby whose quieting verses gradually dissolved into the forgotten recesses of time.

Even so, Merlin began to lose the planes of his face, the curve of his lips, the expanse of his chest. The sound of his voice was all but gone, and he realized bitterly that Arthur would be furious to return and find that even the sky had refused to wait for him. 

He squeezed his eyes shut as the tears fell.

"Come back, for my sake," Merlin pleaded. He no longer cared about how strained he sounded, how his voice tore through his soul. 

Years had piled onto each other until they were a crushing weight, feeding upon the tears Merlin had shed, the blood that ran cold upon his hands, doing nothing to soothe the hole in his heart. Years that crippled him, daring him to give up, as history had long ago. 

But damn the sea, the sky, the world for refusing to wait; damn space and the rulers of time who forgot the will and heart of the Once and Future King, for being flesh and bone, as real as anyone else.

Merlin remembered him. And so, Merlin continued to wait. 

He pressed a kiss to the sigil he had carried in his pocket since what felt like the beginning of time, his lips parting from the bronze outline of a cross and a dragon.

_Return for me, Arthur._

_For me._


End file.
